Gennadi Zakharov

WASHINGTON -- The United States, in a new proposal, has suggested that an American journalist in Moscow and a Soviet employee of the United Nations in New York who are being held on espionage charges be turned over to their respective ambassadors and that the American then be allowed to return home without trial, administration officials said Wednesday. Amid discussions on a way to resolve the latest crisis in Soviet-American relations, State Department and White House officials said they could not predict whether the Soviet Union would agree.

WASHINGTON -- The administration "lost the moral high ground" needed to negotiate the release of the hostages in Lebanon by trading "criminals for innocents" in the Daniloff case, Rep. Les Aspin, D-Wis., said Sunday. Two relatives of the American captives in Lebanon said they have lost faith in the administration for exercising a "double standard" because there is no political gain in freeing their loved ones from Moslem kidnappers. Aspin said he did not believe the release of American journalist Nicholas Daniloff from the Soviet Union was unconditional but instead was a direct swap for accused spy Gennadi Zakharov.

The arrest of an American newspaperman in Moscow on charges of spying demonstrates once again how little regard the Soviet Union has for truth and justice. The charges against Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and World Report magazine, obviously have been trumped up in retaliation for the apprehension on Aug. 23 of a Soviet spy in New York City. The arrest of Gennadi Zakharov, a Soviet employee of the United Nations, not only was a setback to Soviet efforts to steal American military secrets but a severe embarrassment in the court of world opinion.

WASHINGTON -- American reporter Nicholas Daniloff, detained in Moscow for a month as a spy, returned home Tuesday for a joyous family reunion with his "honor and integrity" intact. "I feel I have been vindicated," Daniloff said. In return, Soviet spy Gennadi Zakharov was allowed to go home after pleading no contest to spy charges. Daniloff, 51, and his wife, Ruth, arrived at Dulles Airport near Washington after a 4,000-mile flight from Frankfurt, West Germany. The reporter was allowed to leave Moscow on Monday.

WASHINGTON -- American reporter Nicholas Daniloff, detained in Moscow for a month as a spy, returned home Tuesday for a joyous family reunion with his "honor and integrity" intact. "I feel I have been vindicated," Daniloff said. In return, Soviet spy Gennadi Zakharov was allowed to go home after pleading no contest to spy charges. Daniloff, 51, and his wife, Ruth, arrived at Dulles Airport near Washington after a 4,000-mile flight from Frankfurt, West Germany. The reporter was allowed to leave Moscow on Monday.

UNITED NATIONS -- With a new superpower summit at stake, Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze have tried again to resolve the dispute over American journalist Nicholas Daniloff. The two men, who failed to break the impasse during two days of talks in Washington last week, held a pair of secret meetings in New York Tuesday in a stepped-up effort to clear the way for a second summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The first session was a 40-minute morning meeting at the United Nations headquarters.

WASHINGTON -- The administration "lost the moral high ground" needed to negotiate the release of the hostages in Lebanon by trading "criminals for innocents" in the Daniloff case, Rep. Les Aspin, D-Wis., said Sunday. Two relatives of the American captives in Lebanon said they have lost faith in the administration for exercising a "double standard" because there is no political gain in freeing their loved ones from Moslem kidnappers. Aspin said he did not believe the release of American journalist Nicholas Daniloff from the Soviet Union was unconditional but instead was a direct swap for accused spy Gennadi Zakharov.

NEW YORK -- Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze met Sunday night amid intense speculation that a resolution of the Nicholas Daniloff case could be near. Shultz arrived at the Soviet Mission in New York at 8:30 p.m. EDT but said nothing to reporters as he entered the building. Shultz had arrived in New York from Washington at mid-afternoon to attend the second week of the U.N. General Assembly. The State Department refused comment on the meeting.

To win freedom for Nick Daniloff, President Ronald Reagan not only blinked, he also buckled under the pressure of Soviet blackmail. His past reputation as the Great Communicator, a tough anti-communist and a respected head of state has been tarnished by a bad deal with Mikhail Gorbachev that leaves an impression of a naive victim being hornswoggled by a fast-talking con man. What did America give up to win the freedom of a U.S. journalist who was the...

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- White House officials, warning that the detention of an American reporter in Moscow could affect a summit meeting, said Wednesday that the United States had made a proposal to gain freedom for the journalist. The offer, which officials said had been conveyed to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, calls for freeing of the reporter, Nicholas S. Daniloff, and for release of a Soviet espionage suspect in New York into Soviet custody pending a trial. The details of the proposal were described Wednesday in a Washington report by The Baltimore Sun. American officials said there had been no immediate Soviet response.

UNITED NATIONS -- With a new superpower summit at stake, Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze have tried again to resolve the dispute over American journalist Nicholas Daniloff. The two men, who failed to break the impasse during two days of talks in Washington last week, held a pair of secret meetings in New York Tuesday in a stepped-up effort to clear the way for a second summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The first session was a 40-minute morning meeting at the United Nations headquarters.

WASHINGTON -- The United States, in a new proposal, has suggested that an American journalist in Moscow and a Soviet employee of the United Nations in New York who are being held on espionage charges be turned over to their respective ambassadors and that the American then be allowed to return home without trial, administration officials said Wednesday. Amid discussions on a way to resolve the latest crisis in Soviet-American relations, State Department and White House officials said they could not predict whether the Soviet Union would agree.

The arrest of an American newspaperman in Moscow on charges of spying demonstrates once again how little regard the Soviet Union has for truth and justice. The charges against Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and World Report magazine, obviously have been trumped up in retaliation for the apprehension on Aug. 23 of a Soviet spy in New York City. The arrest of Gennadi Zakharov, a Soviet employee of the United Nations, not only was a setback to Soviet efforts to steal American military secrets but a severe embarrassment in the court of world opinion.

MOSCOW -- Quoting a poem from the Russian romantic poet Mikhail Lermontov -- Goodbye, Unwashed Russia -- Nicholas Daniloff was sprung from Moscow as abruptly as the KGB, just over a month ago, put him behind bars. His release will be a relief to the Soviet government, which had begun to show signs of discomfort about the possibility that the inept and overzealous arrest of the American journalist was beginning to reduce the chance of a summit meeeting between President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev which might, in turn, lead to an arms deal that the stumbling Russian economy badly needs.

`Let there be no talk of a trade for Daniloff," Secretary of State Shultz said at Harvard on Sept. 5. Well, there has been a trade. And the Reagan administration, for all its tough talk, accepted terms significantly worse than Jimmy Carter got from the Russians in similar circumstances in 1978. To make a deal for Nick Daniloff was not wrong. It was just different: A sharp departure from what Ronald Reagan has been saying for years about the danger of agreements with an "evil empire" that does not hesitate "to lie, to cheat, to steal.